Race to save survivors in the rubble after earthquakes

Turkey-Syria toll could hit 20,000 as winter hampers efforts

- CHRIS STEVENSON

Rescue teams are in a race against time to find survivors of the devastating earthquakes that struck Turkey and Syria, with fears that the final death toll could reach 20,000.

Search teams from all over the world, as well as almost 25,000 rescue workers from Turkey, have spread out across the huge area that has been flattened by the tremors. Although rain and snow, plus plummeting temperatures at night, have hampered search efforts - meaning that a number of areas have so far been left without help.

The World Health Organisation (WHO) estimates that 23 million people across both countries could be directly affected by the earthquakes, including 1.4 million children. Unicef also believes that the number of dead could end up including thousands of children. "It's now a race against time," WHO's director-general Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus said in Geneva. "Every minute, every hour that passes, the chances of finding survivors alive diminishes."

Catherine Smallwood, the WHO's senior emergency officer for Europe, has said that the number of dead rises "significantly" in the week after disasters, and that it reaching 20,000 is possible.

Residents have been forced to try to dig their relatives out of the buildings that fell around them. Those trapped have been calling out or sending messages via phone to give a sense of their location. "We could hear their voices, they were calling for help," said Ali Silo, whose two relatives could not be saved in the Turkish town of Nurdag. In the end, it was left to Silo, a Syrian who arrived from Hama a decade ago, and other residents to recover the bodies and those of two other victims.